The criminal version of the Evil Overlord. Standing out from the terrorists, smugglers, murderers, gangsters, evil dictators and other petty criminals is the diabolical mastermind. Generally found sitting in an expensive leather chair with one hand idly tapping a Trap Door button and the other stroking his pet cat, the diabolical mastermind is always at the top of whatever criminal food chain the hero — usually a detective or spy — ends up climbing. He differs from the Evil Overlord in that he (usually) has no sovereign territory or political power of his own, although his criminal resources sometimes rival those of a developed nation.

The diabolical mastermind's motto is that you have to spend money to make money. As such, he may spend countless millions—or billions—of dollars building a super orbitalDeath Ray operated from a secret volcano base, only to then hold the world's Governments to ransom for even more money. Since money is no object, the best way to ask the world for this ransom is to take over every TV channel or network in the world.

Note that the diabolical mastermind is not always motivated by money. He may lust for power, land, priceless art or something else. But his tactics are invariably complicated and technologically impressive.

Typically, the diabolical mastermind holds no political affiliation, nor does he follow anyone else's orders. As far as he is concerned, his is the only opinion that matters and everyone else will follow his lead. He fights for no cause except his own. Any affiliations with political parties or rebel fighters are purely for the purposes of hiding his connections with crimes or having others do his dirty work. This is not to say he has no political views or agenda, just that they are either kept seperate from- or are one in the same as- his own personal ambitions.

Crocodile from One Piece. He's even based off Mafia-type gangsters, and he leads a secret criminal organization that out to overthrow a whole kingdom. What sets him apart from other masterminds, is that Crocodile has superpowers.

Izaya from Durarara!! manipulates people and supernatural beings just because he can, and it's fun. He is an information broker who has a hand in everything that happens in Ikebukuro, and is arguably the most dangerous out of a cast of very dangerous people.

In contrast to his predecessor, Muruta Azrael, who operated publicly as a legitimate (if still exceedingly evil) politician and lobbyist, Lord Djibril of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny prefers to operate as the terrorist version of this. He rarely leaves his hidden lair, from which he pulls the strings on Blue Cosmos, the Atlantic Federation, and eventually the Earth Alliance. Comes complete with Right-Hand Cat, A Glass of Chianti, and no moral compass.

Gouda in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex clearly qualifies. That he is actually a high ranking officer of the national security services acting out in the open and on behalf of his superiors only shows how corrupt and devided the government is.

The Octopus, archfoe of Will Eisener's much-acclaimed The Spirit, is a classic example. Debuting in the 1940s, he anticipated both Dr. Claw and Blofeld in that his face was never seen — even on those occasions when he confronted the Spirit in person, his face was always in shadow, his most distinctive feature being his purple gloves with three yellow lines down the back. Initially a crime-boss, the modern-day reboot by Darwyn Cooke recreates him as the leader of a terrorist group — the Octagon.

Wallenquist in Sin City is The Don who is thwarted quite a bit but remains untouchable by the heroes. In fact, none of the heroes so far, have even met him face-to-face. The Roark family almost qualifies. They're still in power but a few of them are dead at this point.

In Runaways, Alex's parents, Catherine and Geoffrey Wilder are this, controlling most of the LA underworld through fear and intimidation. They have agents within the LAPD, execute anyone who commits a crime without asking their permission first, and have successfully kept most superheroes and supervillains out of the city. The Pride as a whole might actually count, but since Geoffrey is The Big Bad, and the one who handles affairs in LA directly, he and Catherine are the clearest examples (the rest being a collection of Mad Scientists, Evil Sorcerers, time-travellers, Mutants, and Human Aliens who have their own areas of responsibility in The Syndicate). Bonus points for being Badass Normals to boot.

In subsequent chapters, 1985!Geoffrey shows himself to be an example as well. Having just been pulled into the future he forms The New Pride, while successfully manipulating a superhero group and the Runaways into doing exactly what he wants them to, ultimately killing one of them before being returned to the past.

Hunter Rose, the original Grendel in Grendel is a Diabolical Mastermind with a carefully-developed and successful plan to take over all organised crime in the USA. He differs from the usual archetype in being an enthusiastic and very competent fighter who much prefers getting his own hands dirty to telling other people to do so.

Megamind's title character falls somewhere between a low-budget version of a Diabolical Mastermind (with a small number of flying robot minions, a series of secret lairs and endless, albeit simple, schemes to stop Metroman once and for all) and the Mad Scientist (which is far more prevalent).

Most villains from the James Bond movies are diabolical masterminds. The average Bond villain has A) wealth, generally in the millionaire range or higher; B) the unswerving loyalty of large numbers of Mooks ranging from a large criminal gang to an army; and C) political (and usually criminal) connections which leave the villain untouchable through regular channels. Some also have D) political mastery of a small country, or at least control of it for all practical purposes.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld, nemesis of James Bond and leader of supercrime organisation SPECTRE, is probably the most obvious example. Employees of SPECTRE, even famous ones such as Dr. No, probably shouldn't count, since they are subservient to Blofeld, but they do otherwise have most of the necessary qualifactions and certainly act as such in the context of their SPECTRE missions.

Goldfinger is a big time international gold smuggler and a millionare entrepreneur, with ties to the Reds.

Max Zorin is yet another billionare industrialist, as well as a rogue KGB agent and the product of Nazi genetic engineering. He's hit the Bond trifecta!

The Big Bad Duumvirate in The Living Daylights are once again a corrupt Soviet general and a criminal, this time a KGB chieftain and a crooked arms dealer respectively, who plan to have Bond murder the formers KGB superior to cover up their ring of embezzlement, drug running and diamond smuggling.

Franz Sanchez is a big time drug lord with "an invisible empire from Chile to Alaska" and the local dictator in his pocket.

GoldenEye has Janus, who is the head of a big time arms dealing syndicate that has got its hands on a Kill Sat.

Media magnate Eliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies, who uses money from his media empire to create tomorrow's headlines.

Renard from The World Is Not Enough is a notorious international terrorist, while Elektra King was an oil heiress, until she killed her father for revenge and to get rid of the "heiress" part.

Die Another Day has Gustave Graves, a millionare jeweller who secret trades in conflict diamonds, passing them off as from a diamond mine in iceland. He's actually corrupt North Korean colonel General Moon.

The various members of Quantum, from Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace, count where SPECTRE agents do not, as they seem to be an organization of equals. Aside from phony green activist Dominic Greene their leadership includes a former Russian minister turned billionare mine owner; a former Mossad agent turned telecom bigwig; and an advisor to the British Prime Minister.

Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Became Toontown's judge for the sole purpose of erecting a freeway on its site. Also a sole stockholder in the construction company handling the demolition.

Lord Blackwood and Professor Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes. Tried to become Prime Minister-for-life on the backs of his Freemasons-like group; also hinted to be Jack the Ripper.

Dr. Arliss Loveless in Wild Wild West, an ex-Confederate scientist who plots the rise of "The Disunited States of America."

Lex Luthor in the original Superman movie. The character's Mad Scientist aspects were dropped, and the Diabolical Mastermind parts played up for everything they were worth.

Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects. Organizes a bogus heist and instigates his own arrest. It's all part of an elaborate scheme to kill one witness before he can inform on Soze's cartel.

In Unbreakable, this trope is discussed by Elijah's mother near the end, who says that her son refers to these types of supervillains as "The Real Threat" as opposed to villains who simply resort to brute force. As it turns out, Elijah himself is one of these.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The main villain is the Fantom, a wealthy arms manufacturer with highly advanced technology (that he forced a group of kidnapped scientists to make for him) and a desire to start a world war to drum up business. In fact the Fantom is James Moriarty, the brilliant criminal mastermind from the Sherlock Holmes stories, who wants to analyze the League's super abilities and reproduce them in a form that can be given to others.

Literature

Professor James Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes is one of the earliest examples of this trope. The man apparently can't run anything on the up and up: He was a promising faculty member at a provincial university before scandal drove him to resign. The only work he could find afterward was as a private math tutor. This provided excellent cover as he went on to control London's underworld over the next thirty-odd years. Every crook in the city answers to him in one way or another. Better yet, Holmes can't publicly out this kindly old teacher as a major kingpin — he would seem utterly mad.

Other early examples are John Devil (from the eponymous novel) and Colonel Bozzo from The Black Coats. Incidentally, both of these villains were created by the same man: Paul Féval.

"Gentleman" Johnny Marcone of The Dresden Files is probably one of the most benign versions of this, as his mastery of Chicago's underworld has actually reduced the bloodshed and chaos of criminal activity in the Windy City. That has actually been his intended goal for many years now, ever since a young girl was accidentally gunned down by hitmen aiming for him. This hasn't stopped him from turning a pretty good profit, however.

The Avengers faced dozens — possibly hundreds — of these during their adventures. In fact, the series created the term: Mrs Peel's last words to Steed were: "Always keep your bowler on in times of stress, and a watchful eye open for diabolical masterminds."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer had Richard Wilkins III, the folksy Mayor who concealed his satanic bargains behind closed doors. He used a lot of intermediaries to carry out his plots, and rarely set foot outside of City Hall.

Burn Notice had two, both ex-CIA men who blackmailed spies into working for their Murder Inc. operation. The first was colloquially referred to as "Management", and a second "silent partner" named Anson Fullerton.

Life on Mars finds the unit in pursuit of the Morton brothers (a fictitious analogue to the Kray twins), a gangster duo seizing control of Manchester's racketeering outfits by killing their rivals. Their only lead on the brothers' whereabouts is Sam's father, Vic Tyler, a petty crook and the only person to lay eyes on the Mortons. Vic is later revealed to be the true gang leader, with the "Morton brothers" acting as his nonexistent bosses.

Some of the more Genre Savvy Gou'ald System Lords fit this to a T on Stargate SG-1. Particularly the big three that SG-1 faced off against; (in escalating order of how well they fit) Apophis, Anubis, and Magnificent Bastard Ba'al.

That Mitchell and Webb Look had a recurring sketch about one of these, and his frustrations with certain aspects of the job. Such as a contractor's requirement that a secret revolving wall have a clearly visible sign on it saying "Warning: Wall may rotate", and his henchmen responding to the instruction "Let's hope he meets with an unfortunate accident" by hoping that the man in question met with an accident.

In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Our Man Bashir" most of the crew's transporter beam patterns are accidentally put in a holosuite portraying characters in Dr. Bashir's 1960s spy program. Captain Sisko plays a mad supervillain planning to flood the world called "Dr. Noah".

Earth-2 Lionel Luthor in Season 10 of Smallville. By fusing LuthorCorp and the Metropolis underworld he's become the most powerful man on Earth-2, and is one step short of becoming the Corrupt Corporate Executive version of The Emperor. A ruthless Social Darwinist, he values power and control not so much for their sake, but as proof that he, by virtue of his position, is the greatest survivor on Earth-2. Having an evilSuperman at your beck and call can help with that.

Jim Moriarty, the BBC series Sherlock's interpretation of the literary character, is a "consulting criminal", which winds up being a cross between Diabolical Mastermind and Psycho for Hire. Moriarty is portrayed as rivaling Sherlock in terms of intelligence; but where Sherlock stimulates himself by solving crimes and mysteries, Moriarty plans perfect crimes (mostly for other people to actually commit) for the same kind of rush. The money and (incidental) power are just pleasant bonuses for him.

All over the place in Alias. Arvin Sloane, Julian Sark, and two out of the three Derevko sisters all fit the bill at various times. Basically, anyone who wants to lay a claim to being a season's Big Bad.

Frank Fontaine in BioShock. Originally a Brooklyn hoodlum, he made his way to Rapture and cornered the market on fish, which led to his discovery (and later monopolization) of plasmids, which effectively made him the "guv'nor." Fontaine is like teflon; He even opened a "House for the Poor" to engender loyalty from the less fortunate.

Ryan: This Fontaine fellow is somebody to watch. Once, he was just a menace, to be convicted and hung. But he always manages to be where the evidence isn't. He's the most dangerous type of hoodlum... the kind with vision."

Gary Smith, a kid-friendly version, emerges as the main villain of Bully after betraying you in the first Act. He controls each of the school's cliques by playing an 'advisory' role in each. His ultimate goal was not just to take over the Academy (which he does), but to burn it all down just to show he could.

The Flash game "Mastermind World Conqueror" has game mechanics and cutscenes all mastermind-style, in stylish red and black (much like mastermind morality). Play it here. The character himself in the game and the flash series is more a Dr. Evil-like parody who often gets into petty grudges and arguments with his underlings, whom he's way too eager to kill off.

Nicole Horne, the corrupt pharmaceutical pusher from Max Payne. Starting out a government chemist, she began peddling a rejected super-solider drug on the streets. Horne used her old government contacts to assemble an army of mobsters, ex-government agents, and junk squad cops to do the heavy lifting for her.

The sequel, The Fall of Max Payne, gives us Vlad, harmless club owner/shadow leader of the "Cleaners" hit squad. The Squeaky Cleaning Company goes into buildings dressed as custodians, kill their targets, and then use cleaning materials to remove any trace. Their main purpose is stomping anyone standing in the way of Vlad's control of the underworld. He finally overreaches when trying to take over the Illuminati.

Max Payne 3 has three potential conspirators, all siblings in the Branco dynasty. Victor is the corrupt brother: he harvests organs from peasants in the favellas, runs the corrupt special forces, and covertly assassinates the entire Branco clan in order to inherit their wealth. Like previous villains, he is basically evil incarnate, looting from everyone in sight despite being fabulously wealthy already.

"Big Boss" in the first two MSX Metal Gear titles. In both cases, Solid Snake is called in to neutralize a foreign power before it can launch a nuclear weapon, and the American spymaster Big Boss is the shadow dictator of both nations. In addition to hinting at his "final boss" status, his name is an old colloquialism from Wall Street—the "boss" whom all other bosses answer to.

Solidus Snake functioned as one during the events of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Unfortunately for him, in a series where triple-crosses and Man Behind the Man reveals are commonplace, he didn't last past two games. In the original Metal Gear Solid, he was technically the U.S. President, but had little freedom and mostly carried out whatever The Illuminati told him to do. He broke out of the system by attempting to form a coalition with Russian troops in Alaska, an operation spearheaded by Liquid Snake, who believed he was acting alone. When this fell through, Solidus went underground (though publicly he resigned and suffered a heart attack) and regrouped with the Russians, this time seizing an offshore battle cruiser and declaring Manhattan a "free" republic. Just as before, Solidus accomplishes this task by hiding behind a phony hostage-taking.

The game Evil Genius is a Diabolical Mastermind simulation, where you select one of three evil supergenius characters and build up a globe-spanning criminal empire, dealing with any spies or secret agents sent to take you out or disrupt your operation.

City of Villains features a character class devoted to this trope, appropriately named the "Mastermind." Your primary ability is summoning henchmen, be they a robotic army of doom, waves of the undead, heartless mercenaries, armed thugs, or ninjas. Since you can always resummon more, you're expected to let them die in your name — and one support power called "Detonate" specifically is described as giving your minion an explosive device, then while he's trying to set it up, you blow the device and the minion sky high. Also true to the trope, you have the least hit points of any class in the game — but any damage you take can be funneled through your minions in certain situations.

Mr X of Streets of Rage manages to take over the city. Pity he didn't arm his mooks with any of the guns there... He got a nice one for himself though.

In that vein, control over Final Fight's Metro City is being wrested away by the Mad Gear gang, led by a mob boss known as Belger. He dies in the original, but has been reincarnated in various forms (including a cyborg, a zombie, and a vengeful brother).

Geese's counterpart in The King of Fighters is Rugal Bernstein, an arms dealer with a taste for merlot, pet cougars, and portrait galleries of himself. In a running theme for fighting games, he's been killed multiple times and resurrected just as often. Interestingly, he seems to have some Orochi power in him, which explains how he can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Akuma.

M.Bison seems to be behind all the mischief in every Street Fighter game after II, barring the third installment which introduced too many new characters for some fans' tastes. He straddles the Evil Overlord line, but his criminal syndicate and (thankfully) ineffective world domination plots land him a spot on this list.

In Jade Empire, we have Kai Lan the Serpent, who is the local figurehead of The Syndicate in the Imperial Capital Arena. It eventually turns out he's not as high-ranked as you're initially led to believe, as he seems to have superiors of some sort (who only contact you if you kill him in the arena).

Another example is Gao the Greater, another high-ranking member of the same syndicate.

In the Cataclysm expansion his daughter Vanessa does daddy proud by murdering his enemies and setting Sentinel Hill ablaze, all while hiding her true identity until the final reveal.

Grand Theft Auto III introduced Donald Love, a real estate/media kingpin who owns much of Liberty City and is currently involved in an illegal exchange of a mysterious parcel. He works closely with the Columbian Cartel but isn't above wiping them out if they try to blackmail him (or if their deaths will assist in slum clearance...). In a slight inversion of this, he is the highest-paying and most reliable gang "boss" the game offers, and the only one who doesn't betray you by the end. In the prequel Liberty City Stories, he is reimagined as a comic relief nitwit, though with a much higher body count: This time he is an ally of the Leone crime family, running as their Mayoral candidate after having the previous incumbent shot. Despite a colorful election season — involving blown-up election vans, torched ballot machines, and uzi-packing student organizers — he still loses the race and goes bankrupt. Donald later turns up in a flophouse with a scraggly beard; upon discovering Avery Carrington's development plans for Fort Staunton, he directs you to plant explosives under Little Italy, demolishing the entire district and allowing him to spearhead the development project seen in GTAIII.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has an over-arching plot involving the murder of the hero's mother, Beverly Johnson, as part of a coup d'état within the Grove Street families. Corrupt junk squad officer Frank Tenpenny is behind it, promoting Grove Street capo Big Smoke to drug baron in exchange for his cut. Smoke takes over as lead villain once Tenpenny is tried for murder (though he is later acquitted), with numerous gangs answering to him, including the Ballas, the Los Santos Vagos, and the Russian mob.

In the NES adventure game Nightshade, you play as a wannabe crime fighter seeking to fill the vacuum left by Vortex, the city's late superhero. On the flip side, the criminals have their own vacuum to fill: without a hero to fight, the gangs descend into all-out war until a Pharaoh-themed supervillain, Sutekh, proposes that they unite. As his reward, Sutekh is now at the helm of a mega-gang that controls the city.

Hitman introduces a new mastermind in each game barring Contracts, which is a flashback story.

In Codename 47, each of your missions are coming from the same buyer: Dr. Otto Ortmeyer, the human cloning pioneer and "father" to 47. He uses 47 to kill the other genetic donors and reap the rewards for himself. He is later killed after summoning 47 back to the lab he originated from.

In Silent Assassin, 47 falls for the same trick as before. His client this time is Sergei, a Russian mob boss and 47's 'uncle'. (His brother was Boris, the final target in 47's previous outing.) Sergei is not interested in revenge, but merely wants to assemble a nuclear missile which is undetectable by radar. Your targets each own a component for the missile which Sergei asks you to collect.

Blood Money introduced The Franchise, a rival outfit to the protagonist's murder-for-hire "Agency." As Mr. 47 climbs his way up the criminal ladder, killing off the Franchise's mooks, he's captured by the authorities in an untimely raid — whereupon the Franchise's founder is revealed to be the game's narrator, a retired FBI director. The real objective was to get their hands on 47's enhanced DNA to produce more assassins like him: he systematically backed 47 into a corner by killing his associates, hiding behind a phony contract killing business to divert them, all the while giving interviews to the press condemning human cloning (to remove the competition).

Absolution features Blake Dexter, a Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit and de facto ruler of Hope, South Dakota. His main rival in the game is Benjamin Travis, the rather inept head of the International Contracts Agency. Both are locked in a race to reclaim a genetically-engineered assassin, Victoria, who represents the future of weapon development. However, neither is very bright.

Albert Wesker eventually became this in Resident Evil 4 and the spinoffs surrounding it. The comical part is that Wesker was originally just a goon working for the evil Umbrella Corporation. By this time, he was retconned as a Blofeld-type in a black leather chair who carried out orders via monitors and satellites.

In Shadowrun, Jake Armitage is a courier who was shot by his boss, Drake, and left for dead somewhere in Seattle. Unfortunately, the bullet wiped clean any memory of Jake's last assignment or the angry-sounding voice on his answering machine. Drake's identity won't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the universe. (In the future, Dragon Hoards have been supplemented by corporations.)

The enigmatic "Big Daddy" in the XCOM Enemy Within DLC, so named for the overstuffed chair in his lair. His/her organization, EXALT, is conspiring to undermine Earth's defenses and collude with the aliens in order to dominate everyone else. The mastermind is never seen or referenced, and seemingly escapes through a James Bond-style hatch before your forces arrive at the penthouse HQ.

Daedalus from Sluggy Freelance is a light parody of the concept, or else is trying too hard to cleave to it: he has all the trappings, such as the always-shadowed face, but usually manages to spoil the mystique.

The aptly named Mastermind from The FAN appears to be this, though not much is known about him at the moment. He does seem to be the head of a powerfull corporation that has it's own army and several MIB in it's employment, and he only appeared so far as a black distorted silouette with a magenta colored eye on a green monitor, amongst a lot of static.

In The Gamer's Alliance, VesuviusMatheson is the wealthy head of the far-reaching Matheson Crime Family which owns the city of Matheson and has his minions infiltrating or bribing many government officials in Maar Sul. He hatches elaborate schemes to strengthen his power base, even going so far as to fund the Proninist invasion of Maar Sul.

Doctor Steel. Though he's not so much evil as he is mad...very mad. Very, very mad.

There are several in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, but the ones to really worry about are Lord Doom (who wants to take over the world in order to save humanity from itself), Doctor Simian (a super-intelligent chimpanzee who wants to overthrow humanity and put apes in their rightful place as rulers of the Earth), and The Emperor, leader of TAROT (who wants to control the world through economics).

And it is entirely possible that The Emperor has already succeeded in doing just that.

Dominus in the Whateley Universe. He's the head of The Syndicate and is a shadowy director from behind the scenes. Chessmaster might count as well, even if he was actually in the vicinity during the Halloween invasion, hidden away in his flying command base, surrounded by mooks, while his lover Deathlist led the assault.

Subversion: The Monarch, would-be superfoe of Doctor Thaddeus Venture and The Venture Bros., spent his trust fund becoming a diabolical mastermind purely so that he could be a diabolical mastermind. He has no desires beyond killing Doctor Venture, despite the fact that Venture couldn't care less about him.

The Sovereign is the official Diabolical Mastermind of the series as the head of the Guild of Calamitous Intent. However, his actions thus far in the series hasn't been overly villainous.

Hank Scorpio, from The Simpsons, is another parody; he's a textbook diabolical mastermind, except that he's a really nice guy and good boss. One of the most popular one-shot characters in The Simpsons.

Kim Possible is positively lousy with Diabolical Masterminds—except that none of them are actually any good at it.

Dr. Zin in Jonny Quest TOS. He has at least two major bases, a castle and an Elaborate Underground Base inside a volcano, plus an army of mookss. He's also a technological genius, who developed a robot spy and a beam that can shoot down airplanes.

Transformers Beast Wars Megatron is a prime example. Unlike other Megatrons, this one didn't have any political power among his faction. (The Council considered him a dangerous rogue.) He's described as brilliant for his cleverly crafted strategies he uses to thwart the Maximals throughout the show. He has a handful of lackeys, (half of them traitorous, and the other half stupidly loyal) and he takes the time to incorporate their plans against him to further his agenda without them knowing.

Belphegor, the main villain from the French-Canadian animation Belphegor, fits this trope very well. Unlike most diabolical masterminds however, he very often gets in on the action just as much as his mooks and underlings, if not more so.

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